One of the Best Web 2.0 Tools: Evernote

Image from macthemes.net

Want to take notes, capture pictures, do some writing, and be able to access all of your saved work from any computer. You don't need a portable drive. You can save it all with Evernote. In fact, this blog post was  saved in Evernote, and I just copied and pasted it here. Evernote is fast becoming my favorite Web 2.0 tool.

Wondering how to use Evernotes, check "10 Evernote Tips for School: Education Series" and also "10 Tips for Using Evernote."

Here's more information "The Many Purposes of Evernote."

Evernote. also works on your smartphone. Can't go wrong! Can access anything you save from just about anywhere on the Net. If you have not tried Evernote., try it today.

Digital Technologies and Cell Phones in Schools

Video: Digital Technology in the Classroom : Watch the Video!

The scale tilts. More and more educators call for cell phones in schools. Recently, the National Education Association endorsed their use; see the article Get Smart!

 10 Proven  Strategies to Break the Ban and Build Opportunities for Student Learning with Cell Phones enumerates practical and pedagogical reasons for cellphone inclusion.

Though digital technologies like laptops find their way into schools, there's still plenty of bans on cellphones. But what about the schools where laptops and desktops are scarce? How can cellphones close the digital divide?

After checking these sources, what's your position on digital technologies and cellphones in schools? Are the arguments in these sources one-sided?

50 Sites in 60 Seconds

50 Sites in 60 seconds is a not-to-be-missed slide presentation of excellent websites to use for integrating technology tools into your teaching. Go through the slide presentation, and note which sites you know and which you want to check out. There's plenty here to keep you busy and to give you excellent ideas for sprucing up your teaching. With the summer coming, it's an excellent time to play, explore and think about what new tools you want to integrate into your teaching and how you might use them to spark student engagement and learning. Enjoy, and let us know what you find. Post a comment.

Reluctant to Use Twitter: Don't Be

While poking around a biology teacher's blog, Stacy Baker's blog, I found this great Prezi on how and why teachers should get on the Twitter bandwagon: Using Twitter in the Classroom. Check out the presentation. Let us know what you think. Why shouldn't teachers join Twitter? Why should they? How can Twitter open windows of opportunity? Why is Twitter one of the best free professional development opportunities available to teachers? What tips can you offer teachers for getting over the learning curve of using this incredible tool?

Assuming you now have a Twitter account and are looking for educators to follow, check this twitter list: "All nominees in the 2010 Edublog Awards category for Best Individual Tweeter! These tweeters have been around for a while, and regulary post on Twitter.

Looking for literary authors to follow on Twitter, check this resource: Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter




Here's a cute video to entertain you about using Twitter:


Nancy White & Suzy - An Intro to Twitter from CommunityMatters on Vimeo.

Back to this blog a few days later....Just found this posting about how a high school social studies department is using Twitter: Developing a department Twitter feed. Increasingly,Twitter is making its way into the educational setting for both teacher professional development and for integration into the classroom, though teachers are more likely to use the school-safe site Edmondo for microblogging.

Twiiter logo from: Image from: jhuskisson.com

Top 100 Tools for Learning and Best of the Web

Okay, what are some of the top rated tools for learning? Each year, lists come out, and one such list is published by Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies. Its 2011 Top 100 Tools for Learning gives top billing to Twitter, third year in a row.  YouTube comes in second followed by Google docs and Skype. Skim the list. Which tools are your favorites? Which have you been meaning to try? Which are ones you have not considered, but pique your interest?

Other online lists of top winners include The Best of the Web, which offers links to find educational online websites across grade levels and subject areas. Check it out. Let us know what you like. There's plenty to explore, given most of the links go to gateway sites, listing a host of resources.

Image from: jeffreyhill.typepad.com

Tablets Yes, E-Books Maybe

The article Tablets Yes, E-Books Maybe in today's Inside Higher Education reviews the status of tablets and e-books for college learning and includes student response to the possibilities. Data from large-scale student surveys show mixed reaction, but most students believe tablets hold the potential to revolutionize the way they learn. Check the article as well as the comments posted at the end, and also use the links in the article to access additional information. Then weigh in on your opinion about tablets and e-books and their place in higher education. How soon do you think tablets and e-books will replace paper textbooks, if at all? What changes do you think will occur in higher education for students in the future?

Kids Love Blogging

Interested in seeing examples of how elementary school students use blogging, how their blogging meets curricular standards, and learning more about this blogging project created by a California teacher, check out these resources:

Garrison Elementary Students Create Digital Blog Portfolio

Kids Like Blog Site

This second link will take you to a page to learn about the teacher, the program, the curricular standards, as well as a link to Examples, which has links to two students blogs created with Blogger. One student's blog, The Blog of Hooverneb showcases both writing and drawings. Another student's blog, Official Blog of a Soccer Star is written by a student who writes: "There are many jobs in the world, but there is one that really catches my eye. I want to be a WRITER!"

Another exciting site to check out is one with links to find class blog sites maintained by elementary school classes.  Check this page Fellow Bloggers to learn about teachers using KidBlog with their students. You can access the class blogs and even write comments on the kids' blogs.

Photo Credit by the teacher, Jon Schwartz, Garrison Elementary School Students

Resources for Teachers

The Pursuit of Technology Integration Happiness blog maintained by a secondary teacher contains four excellent blog posts that list a plethora of resources by subject area. In all cases, descriptions of the resources are given with hyperlinks to immediately access them. The resources available apply to  teachers grades K-16. You can spend hours exploring all the resources offered. Take a look at one of the pages to find a long list of possible sources applicable to teaching and learning.

Resources for English

Here you will find general resources as well as resources on Writing, Reading, American Literature, and British Literature.

Mathematics Resources

Gives about 40 general resources followed by resources for the areas of algebra, geometry, calculus, and trigonometry.

Science Resources

General resources followed by resources categorized as earth-space, biology, chemistry, and physics.

Social Studies Resources

Categories resources by history, geography, economics, and arts/humanities.

In total, the resources available from these blogs should keep high school and middle school teachers happy with the quick access to a variety of valuable resources for integrating technology into their teaching. Let us know which resources you find particularly helpful to your teaching.

Top 10 Web Tools for Educators, from Harvard Education Letter

For setting up websites to keep students current, Google Sites and Weebly are listed as the top tools.  Edmodo ranks at the top for posting assignments and other notices and for students to upload work and communicate with peers (see image to the right).

Wikispaces remains a popular tool for students to collaborate in creating web pages.

To set up forums, Chatzy or TodaysMeet allow students to collaborate in real time.  Twitter is not only catching on for microblogging, but is one of the fastest growing social networking sites, outpacing Facebook according to some sources.  Vocaroo and Voki record voices and other sounds for embedding in \web pagesn and the like.  Poll Everywhere is used to gather students' opinions.

For more information on these tools, check the Harvard Education page, Top 10 Tools for Educators. Let us know which of these tools are you use and how students respond. Which tools would you like to try and why?

Digital Media and the Age of Distraction

Not surprisingly, a recent stream of articles and books focus on Internet overload and loss of concentration.  In the blog, "8 Must- Reads About Digital Distraction and Information Overload," David Lavenda gives his list, and the titles alone speak to the concern:

Articles:
"I Can't Think!" - an article in Newsweek.
"Wired for Distraction?" from Time magazine
"Social Media Users Grapple with Information Overload" in USA Today
Your Brain on Computer, a 7-part New York Times special series with titles such as Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction and Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime
Books:
Hamlet's Blackberry by William Powers
The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (See video interview with the author in next blog.)
The Tyranny of Email: The Four Thousand Year Journey to Your Inbox by John Freeman.
The Information: A History, A Flood, A Theory by James Gleick

Is our online life increasingly distracting us from reading? If so, we might not have time to check any of these readings to comprehend the implications biologically, chemically, socially of our new habits of mind. On the other hand, perhaps there is urgency to reading these pieces to fathom the impact of how our lives are changing.
In the  Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, its author, David Ulin contends the quiet space needed for reading eludes us in our over-networked times.

What are the risks of living in an overly distracted world, where contemplation, quiet, and sustained reading threaten to be diminished? Have we acquiesced to the distractions, to the small fits of reading online, in chunks, with the classic book as a text slowly diminishing in value and as an activity of mind? Are these changes for the better as some technology gurus proclaim, or are they for the worse as the authors of the named text beseech us to believe?   

Image from Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction , NYT article

Is the Internet Dumbing Us Down?

How the Internet is Affecting Our Brains?

Is the Internet affecting our power to concentrate? In this video, Nicholas Carr, author of the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, offers some insights based on his research. Check out the video, and don't get distracted. Leave some comments. Do you think the Internet is affecting our brains? Are we losing the power to concentrate? Should we tune out for a few days?

Social Activism of Yesteryear Versus Social Media of Today

Please take some time to read this New Yorker magazine article by best-selling author Malcolm Galdwell (e.g., Tipping Point and Blink): Twitter, Facebook, and Social Activism.

The article addresses social media of today as opposed to activism of the past. What is your response to the article? How might the ideas in this article be used in the classroom to provoke discussion?

Photo from http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/malcolm-gladwell-on-outliers-the-story-of-success/article104648.html

Professional Organizations’ Facebook Pages

If you use Facebook, you might want to receive feeds from your professional organizations, or if you prefer, save the URLs in your bookmark folder and access the pages without using a Facebook account. Here are examples of five professional organizations with Facebook pages:

National Council of Teachers of Math at:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/TeachersofMathematics

Spanish Teachers at:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Spanish-Teachers/306012289177

American Association of Teachers of French at:
http://www.facebook.com/AATFrench

International Reading Association at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Reading-Association/8149175108

Read, Write, Think at:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf#!/pages/ReadWriteThinkorg/114708779358

If you check out any of the Facebook pages of a professional organization, let us know your response. If you know of other organizations with Facebook pages, share with us this information.

Reminder: Free Technology for Teachers

If you have not already bookmarked or created a feed to Free Technology for Teachers, which describes free to use online sites, offers free lesson plans, and categorizes access by an index of subject areas, such as science, math, and so forth, it is time that you have. This is a site worth checking regularly, and it has over 25,000 readers, not surprisingly! New posts appear almost daily. Educators find this site an indispensable resource. Once you have time to explore, let us know what you find of value.

Free Technology for Teacher is maintained by Richard Byrne, and his site has won numerous awards. If you don't find what you are looking for the first time around, check back later. This is not the first time I have posted a blog about Free Technology for Teachers. Just wanted to post another reminder about a blog chock full of resources.

Image credit: banner on Free Technology for Teachers

You Don't Have a Blog Yet, What Are You Waiting For?

Ideally, teachers should maintain a website. Even more ideal, they need a blog. Check the 20 Top Teacher Blogs from Scholastic's Instructor magazine to see what other teachers are doing. Let us know what you think of some of the blogs listed, and tell us of other teacher blogs you follow or find useful. Use the Index on this blog, Computers in the Classroom, to find other postings about blogging.

Teachers' Websites

Let's share examples of excellent teacher websites you have explored. Based on one student's contribution to our class's online discussion, I found an excellent model created by a teacher who has been a student at Saint Joseph College. Please take some time to explore Mercier's Magic. There's plenty to explore here. When you first open the site (be sure to have sound on), you will find her current school year site, but under the Home tab, you will see accessible sites from prior years.

Not only does Ms. Mercier group her content by subject area and audience (e.g., parents), she also provides throughout the site links to wonderful websites for instructional purposes. She uses Weebly to maintain her site. Feel free to explore Weebly as a mean to create your own student-centered website.

Ms. Mercier works with symbaloo.com to create customized pages of recommended sites for students. Here are fast links to some of her Symbaloo pages:
multimedia , math, and writing.

To create your own customized resource pages for your students with Symbaloo, open an account, and then you are set to build your pages of recommended sites by discipline, subject area, or general area of interest, using Symbaloo's database of recommended sites.

Ms. Mercier also maintains a blog through Weebly, allowing her students to post comments. In addition, check her Twitter account.

Webbly, Mrs. Scelia is a site designed by another Weebly-user teacher. Ms. Scelia started this site August 2010 to provide resources to her young students.

Let us know what you think of the websites these teachers maintain.

Post your recommendations of teacher websites worth visiting by providing the URL's.

Photo of Ms. Mercier from Mercier's Magic. Photo Ms. Scelia from Webbly, Mrs. Scelia
Logo from Weebly.

Twitter Tweets Archived with Library of Congress

Even if you don't tweet on Twitter and therefore don't need to worry about your 140-character pearls of wisdom, The Library of Congress archives Twitter Tweets, maintaining an electronic record of Twitter's content. The Library of Congress blog explains the archive: How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive. Using the archive can be a valuable source of information, but what about privacy rights? Take a look at the blog posting How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive, and reflect on what it means for the Library of Congress to maintain this archive. Moreover, what might be the value of the archive in the school setting? Do you think students using Twitter realize an archive of their Tweets exists with the Library of Congress? Does it matter to them to know their pearls could be archived? What about maintaining historical records of tweets? How might this archive be of value in the school setting? When referencing the blog posting, also take some time to read comments posted by others to gain a perspective on how others are reacting.

Image from: How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive

Award-Winning Teacher's Blog and Website

A California middle school teacher, Heather Wolpert-Gawron, maintains a blog with helpful tips for middle school teachers and a website for her students. Her blog isTweenTeacher.com and expresses her enthusiasm for teaching at this level and offers insightful professional development ideas. Her website for her students is available at:
http://web.me.com/bulldogradio/JeffersonRadio/Welcome.html

On her website for students, you will find links for her 7th grade students and another for her 8th graders, as well as a link to a page where she archives students' podcasts, under the title of Bulldog Radio. Check both her blog for teachers and her website for her students. Let us know what you think.

Image is the logo Heather Wolpert-Gawron uses on TweenTeacher.com

R U Txting Now?

Is texting increasing exponentially as some claim? Is it a distraction in the school setting? What are the psychological effects? What are the implications of texting on learning and teaching? Can teachers stop texting in their classrooms? Read the USA Today article: "Texting Away UR Education."

On the one hand, some teachers advocate for students texting instead of raising their hands. Teachers see it as a way for students to respond in class. In the article, I KN the Answer, one Texas teacher enumerates benefits for texting in class as well as for a homework aid for students to keep in touch with teachers.

After reading both articles, weigh in on the issue of where texting belongs in the schools, if at all?

Photo from the article I KN the Answer, published in EduDemic.

Social Network Sites in the Schools

Digital Directions, an online journal, published a helpfu article exploring the pros and cons of using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Ning in the school setting. This article should be helpful reading to you as an educator. Let us know what you think after you have read the article, Social Networking Goes to the School.

Illustration Roy Weiman from the article "Social Networking Goes to School."